Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Joey
Cam drops us off at Mastodon Headquarters and says he’s going to meet up with the other Families to check on all the businesses.
The Four Families have all their people watching buildings, protecting the assets, and generally on high alert.
Uncle Gio is on the phone with the other uncles trying to get reinforcements to the safe house where the kids and aunts are.
One of Mastodon’s employees leads us into a staff break room, with couches and comfortable chairs and a mini fridge in the corner.
Jenny and I snuggle on the couch. She was quiet the whole ride back. And pouty. “Are you okay? Besides the obvious trauma.”
She squishes her face and exhales. “I’m bummed that the ADHD guy died. I hope he gets to be a ghost or something.” She pauses. “Weird, I don’t think I would’ve said anything to you about that a few weeks ago. It’s like I’m not as concerned about what you’ll think of me anymore.”
“Probably because you know I like you.”
Her face sours. “No, that’s not it.”
Before I can ask any follow-up questions, the door opens and there’s a blur of motion and barking. Kingston does a lap of zoomies around the room, stops at Donny’s feet, growls, and jumps on my lap, shaking.
“Kingston!” He’s soft and fluffy in my arms as he licks my face. He pulls away and jumps onto Jenny’s lap, buries his face in the pillow next to her, and sticks his ass in the air for butt scratches. Then he jumps down, circles the room three times, and finally curls up on my lap.
Once the dog is settled, I see Dimitri standing in the doorway. “Little guy was scared. We found him under your bed.”
“We?”
Dimitri nods. “Yeah, I took Grae from the safe house before moving him here. We got notification from the cabin’s cameras that there was movement.
We watched you get taken, but we were too far out to do anything, so we went back to get the dog.
” Dimitri exhales and crosses his arms. “Grae was willing to run into the forest in a fucking tuxedo to find Kingston. I was the one who noticed the front door was still open and suggested we check the house first. Hell, Grae said he’d take the dog if anything happened to you.
” He mumbles, “I don’t want to break his heart and tell him you're alive.”
Katya comes in next, her hair frazzled, no longer in the tight bun she normally wears when she’s on duty. She rests her head on Dimitri’s shoulder, and he quickly wraps his arms around her waist. I’ve never seen her so stressed before.
“You okay?” I ask.
Katya sighs. “It was a long night. After the Aurora Awards and Lance ran off, I took Grae, Lena, and Amanda to a safe house.” She motions in a big circle.
“Which was compromised, so Alana set Dimitri and Uri to help move our clients. Each of us took one of the high priority clients here since this location is the most secure.” She looks around the room at us.
“Amanda is locked away in the guest rooms in the basement.”
Donny lifts his head from his phone. “The basement? Isn’t that where you killed a bunch of people?”
“Technically, I only killed one person. But yeah.”
The color drains from Donny’s face. “You guys cleaned it, right?”
“The blood? Yeah.”
“Good, because I did a shitty job during the first round of cleaning.”
Katya frowns. “You did. It took three crews to fix it.”
Jenny squirms in my arms. “Wait, Amanda Chase is in this building?”
Katya smirks. “Now isn’t the best time for a meet and greet.”
Dimitri and Katya talk in Russian to each other for a few minutes, when more footsteps come down the hall. The sweet female voice makes me jump up to my feet. It's a relief I feel in my soul.
Izzy, Lance, and Thiago enter the room, each looking worse than the other. Lance's hair is all over the place, his shirt stained with sweat. Thiago's hands and knees are all dirty. Only Izzy, who came back from the dead, seems relatively unharmed.
“Izzy, you’re ok!”
I wrap my arms around her, pangs of worst fears clawing at my brain. I almost lost her.
She accepts the hug and hugs me back. “Awe, were you worried?”
“Fuck you, of course I was.” I don’t know why she thought I wouldn’t be.
She steps out of our hug. “Alana spent money upgrading all the cars with bulletproof glass and armor. Plus, she added AI video imaging to make it appear like wherever there was impact from a bullet, the people inside would have the correct injury. Bang bang bang… we’re playing possum.
She intercepted the ambulance and the police to make it one of our guys. ”
Lance rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands.
“A fact I forgot about when I received the video, which those motherfuckers sent to everyone with any connection to the Four Families.” He exhales and his shoulders slump.
“Once I stopped having a panic attack and realized my fiancée and best friend weren’t dead, I’ve been running everything from screens for the last two hours. Everyone is coming back here.”
The terror Lance must have had in those minutes…
I can’t even imagine. I rub Kingston’s ears between my fingers and he spreads his body out the length of the couch.
Thank God Dimitri went back to the cabin to find him.
He digs his head into my lap, raising his hips and tail up for butt scratches.
This stupid fuzzy terror has no idea what happened tonight, but he knows we were scared and is doing what he can to make me feel better.
Was everyone else aware that animals were this empathic?
Thiago brushes his hands against his knees and frowns. “What happened to you?” I ask.
“I was moving the programmers and the rest of the staff out of the compound to a secure location. The last thing I wanted was for the women to be recaptured by the Deviant and forced to work for him again. But they had other plans. They kicked me out of the car, and waged war on the Deviant themselves.”
Lance nods. “If he’s got his guys attacking us, then no one is protecting his assets. Early reports suggest they’re kicking ass, and one of our guys in the FBI already has a SWAT team ready to raid one of the Deviant’s strongholds.”
The door opens again, and this time I don’t recognize the man. He has sandy blond hair, glasses, and a navy-blue Mastodon T-shirt. “All VIPS are in the rooms. Feds will be here in twenty to escort them to a safe location until we get the all clear.”
Lance gives him a fist bump. “Nice work, Markus.” Is this the guy Uri keeps talking about?
The room is filling quickly, but it’s large enough for us not to feel we’re on top of each other. Still, it's nice to be with my people, the things that are important. A few years ago, it was just me and Donny. Then Alana brought us all back together and added extras.
Uri enters, and he looks the worst out of everyone. His face is pale, eyes wide, and he’s biting his nails. That’s something he hasn’t done since he was a teenager.
“You ok, Uri?” I ask.
He rubs his temples. “Long night, man.” But he gives me a little smirk. “Glad to see you made it out okay.”
The door opens and in steps Alana, her hair typically in a perfect ponytail, now cocked to the side.
She seems pale, or maybe it’s lighting. Her all-black suit has various darker wet stains, and there are speckles of blood on her face.
Our greatest warrior is home. We’re all together and safe and for the first time since we left the cabin, the vice grip around my heart loosens, and I can finally breathe.